"Corvus Rules Question - boarding action " Topic

Played my first game today and the first boarding action was my small 2 oar banker vs the enemy 6 oar bank command ship.

I successfully grappled and come the fight the enemy ship had something like a +6 over my ship. I roll a 1 and the enemy rolled a 5.

Looking up the combat table it appears that as the difference is over 2 (doesn't matter that I had the lower roll) I won and capture the enemy commend ship.

Is this correct?

The combat effect table is used for both ramming and close combat (boarding) or shooting and the 'difference' referred to applies to the winner in CC (highest score) and the looser (lowest score) in Ramming.

I'll admit it does not say exactly that in the rules but I can't really see how you would expect otherwise.

With your interpretation it could equally be the larger ship that won thus making it impossible to determine the outcome – which makes that interpretation unlikely.

The rules were intentionally written with a minimum of verbage and do probably make assumptions that players have some experience with wargame rules and know a little bit about oared naval warfare in general.

Tony Hughes

your interpretation it could equally be the larger ship that won thus making it impossible to determine the outcome

Actually that isn't likely as the rules stated the 'boarded ship' or similar so it clear in this instance that as the small ship successfully boarded the larger ship who is getting boarded.

winner in CC (highest score) and the looser (lowest score) in Ramming.

So in this case whoever gets the higher score (after adding die roll, ship and combat factors) is deemed the 'rammer' for reading the results.

I'll admit it does not say exactly that in the rules but I can't really see how you would expect otherwise.

Well 3 of us with over 100 yrs wargaming experience had trouble with this.

I think it pretty obvious what 'Rammer' means – the ship that does the ramming, dice scores cannot affect the meaning of words. Read in context with the action taking place this should not confuse.

There is no mention of the 'boarded ship' in that part of the rules so my point stands. You may not normally use rules where the highest scoring side is deemed the victor but such rules are very common. The fact that larger, more powerful vessels have bigger scores should also be a clue to interpretation.

As you probably realise I am not the author but only did the layout and worked on some changes with the author. He specifically wanted them as short and as simple as possible – you obviously feel that this was overdone.